


Godling

by shit-escalates (Schm0use)



Series: Assemble [2]
Category: Red Rising Trilogy - Pierce Brown
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-01
Updated: 2015-07-01
Packaged: 2018-04-07 02:15:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4245660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Schm0use/pseuds/shit-escalates
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“In the tongue of the mortals, your name means peace. Peace is what you will bring them.” </p><p>An origin story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This got away from me a bit. Will be two parts, because I couldn’t stop writing. Much of it is not mythologically compliant, so any Classics majors out there will have to forgive me.

“My son.”

Jupiter’s voice was as rolling thunder during a summer rain. Eyes like twin suns gazed down at the baby in his arms, free to do so now that the birth celebration had ended and the Divine had all gone their separate ways. Free for a moment to stare at the perfect child he had created. For it was perfect, as were all things of his creation.

“He will be wise,” his daughter Minerva had said of the boy when she had held him in her arms, studying him with her shrewd owl eyes. She was so often aloof, but now as the child grabbed a handful of her shining hair in his tiny fat fist, she merely loosened his hold and wrapped him snugly in her cloak of air and starlight. Her lips twitched in what might almost have been a smile. She favored him. “He will be wise.”

That was good. Jupiter laid the boy down upon pillows of cloud and rested his hand upon the child’s head.

“My son,” he repeated, that the boy may know young who his great father was, that he may know from birth who  _he_ was. “Pax.”

With no one around to see, the god of the heavens and earths sat upon the floor like a mortal, legs folded beneath him. He leaned his back against one of the soaring pillars of his home in the sky, absently stroking his son’s golden hair.

“In the tongue of the mortals, your name means peace. Peace is what you will bring them. But they will not understand, at first.”

He swept his hand across the sky and the constellations moved at his command. The stars soared to his outstretched fingers, taking shape as they sizzled upon contact with his skin. They formed a weapon of fire and light. A hammer of the gods.

“The mortals are fragile. Their enemies are not. You will need to become what you fight to achieve your goal. You will need to become a warrior. Only when you are worthy of that title will you be able to take up my hammer.”

The child babbled nonsense. Jupiter set the burning hammer next to him and Pax wrapped his pudgy limbs around it, beginning to doze off. Jupiter continued to gaze at the sky.

The stars told him nothing of Pax, but what could even they say about a godling whose mere existence had changed the course of the future?

***

“My son…”

Below Jupiter’s realm in the sky, below all the earths, “below” the realms of time and space, sprawled Hades, the Underworld. There in the shadows, the god of death sat on his throne of dark ice and wept.

In his arms, Pluto held a child. This was no perfect boy—no tiny god. This boy was small and pinched, skin still red and in some places bloody from the birth, though Pluto had tried to clean him as best he could. None of the Divine had come to see this child. Not one of his brothers, no gods or goddesses had kissed his son upon the brow or been pleased to hear the news of his birth.  

The mother was dead. Proserpina was dead, had died giving life to their child. Death was all around him. So it was. So it had ever been.

“My son,” he sobbed again. The child did not cry. He would have thought this still, silent thing dead as well if it had not already opened its eyes. For all that was ordinary about it, the child’s eyes already gleamed with an intellect all its own. It was a strange and unnatural light.

It should frighten him, but instead it gave him hope.

“Adrius Lucian…” Pluto whispered, his voice echoing as the voices of a hundred million lost souls spoke through him. Now his wife was among them. Through him, she spoke to her son. “In the tongues of mortals, your name is of two worlds: dark and light.” He pressed his cold lips to the boy’s forehead.

“I will have you take their light, for mine has gone from the worlds. And in return, you will bring them darkness.”

***

They grew side by side, Pax like a tall oak and Adrius like a scant weed. They grew through the ages of humanity, walking amongst the mortals at first, both beloved and feared. In Pax’s name, they held festivals and banquets, affairs of laughter and dance and song, loud and filled with life. Adrius’s name they feared to mention, instead showing reverence to his divine nature on nights of the new moon, a lamb’s blood sacrifice painted fresh and red on their faces to mark the circumstances of his birth.

It was rumored that some of the most devout sects used the blood of newborn infants. But whether these rumors were true was never certain, and such dark rituals went undiscovered.

In time, humanity began to turn from the Old Ways, and Pax and Adrius withdrew to the realm of Olympus.

“The mortals,” Jupiter said, “must learn to govern themselves. There is a balance, Pax, in ruling and protecting.”

His boy looked down upon the mortals. Pax had reached adolescence—hundreds of years passed in weeks, days for them. He stared down as wars began and ended, millions of lives lost in the time it took him to respond.

He remembered many things from his time on Earth.

As a baby, he had played with lions, rolling on the ground with their cubs, learned to be quick on his feet and carry strength in his heart.

There was the young couple that had found him wandering in the woods as a child—they treated him as their own, traveling from place to place to allow him to live among mortals as though he were one of them. They loved him all the long years of their lives, though to him the time passed as quickly as a winter sunset. When they became too old to travel, he cared for them in turn, and finally laid them to rest side by side under the tree where they’d first met.

He thought of the festivals of lights and sound, the way the mortals greeted him not with heads bowed to the ground but with arms outstretched to embrace him. He remembers the flowers in the hair of the young maidens he danced with.

“What if I don’t want to rule?” Pax asked.

“That is not your choice,” Jupiter told him. “It is your right.”

Tomorrow the boy would depart to fulfill his destiny—a grueling journey across the Divine realm set with tasks the likes of which no man or god had faced before. If he could complete the quests, he would be deemed worthy of the gift Jupiter had promised him at his birth. So went the trials:

The Nemean Lion, the Lernaen Hydra, and the Stymphalian Birds Pax slew with his bare hands. The Ceryneian Hind, Cretan Bull, and Erymanthian Boar he brought back to the Pantheon and Jupiter as gifts. He cleaned the Augean Stablesin a single day, starting at sun up and watching as the river Alpheus washed away the filth before Apollo’s chariot had touched the opposite end of the sky. The monstrous Mares of Diomedes he could not tame, and refused to satisfy their diet of human flesh, and so he drowned them in the ocean.

Of the giant Geryon, he made a friend, and was given his herd of Cattle to present to Jupiter. And so impressed with his feats was Hippolyta, ruler of the Amazons, that she willingly gave the boy her Girdle as proof of her queenship—though she would long afterwards laughingly tell her maiden troops the story of the blushing godling who came to request it of her.

Eleven of twelve trials passed effortlessly, and with the completion of the last, Pax would be assured his place as one of the greatest of the Divine, the god who would bring peace to the world of men.

But it was not to be.

The final trial was to be completed in Hades, the Underworld. The seizing of Cerberus.

But when Pax arrived at the black hole gates of Tanaerum and entered the Underworld, he did not find waiting before him the challenge to overpower and capture the beast.

Instead, he found it lying dead inside.

Slowly, he walked to the mountain of a body. Its head rolled at an odd angle; its neck was broken. But upon closer inspection, a seeping chest wound revealed the full story—the weight of its body had snapped its neck after it had fallen in death, killed by a stab to the heart.

A noise from behind him made him turn. It was Adrius.

“Why did you do this, cousin?” Adrius asked him.

“What happened to it?” Pax asked, not understanding.

“Even now, you feign ignorance?” Adrius pointed to the dead guardian. “You have killed Cerberus.”

“I?” Pax repeated, shocked. “I would not do such a thing!” Hideous though the beast looked, he and Adrius had played with it as a pup, made games out of dodging it’s lightning fast scorpion’s tail. He never had plans to injure it. The very sight of the corpse made him sorrowful.

“I had thought all this madness between you and Jupiter would come to pass.” Adrius shook his head. “But it would appear that is not to be.”

“Don’t speak of Jupiter that way.” Pax said sternly, but Adrius overrode him. 

“You have massacred great beasts of legend—” He said.

“They were killing mortals by the hundreds!” Pax tried to interrupt, but to no avail. Adrius went on.

“You have stolen the invaluable property of our neighbors, both mortal and immortal alike—”

“I returned the cattle.”

“And now, you have committed the greatest atrocity of all—you have slain Cerberus, and left the doors to the Underworld unguarded for the first time in millennia.” Adrius took a deep breath. “How do you expect to atone for this?”

“I didn’t kill Cerberus.” Pax said, somewhat desperate. “ _Cousin_ —”

“Are you that desperate to achieve this far flung dream of your father’s?” Adrius asked quietly. “Do the people not already love you enough?”

“They don’t anymore.” Pax said.

“Then is it not enough that I love you?” Adrius pressed him. “That Jupiter loves you? That all the rest of the Divine love you? This one failing will not change that. You must admit your mistakes and move forward.”

He stretched his arms out to Pax, beseeching him.

“But I did not do this,” Pax repeated. “I would not do this.”

“You were sent to retrieve Cerberus from Hades. You tried to subdue him and you failed. There was no one else who could have pierced through his hide but you.” Adrius took him by the shoulders. “Even if you did not do this… who will believe you?”

Pax sagged at Adrius’s words. Whether this was true or not, he did not know. But the dog lay dead, and his final task would remain uncompleted. He would never be worthy.

Pax stared into Adrius’s eyes. “I have failed.”

“At this one thing,” Adrius said, guiding him back towards the gates. “But you must return, now, before anyone discovers news of what you have done.”

Pax took one last look at the body of Cerberus as they went. He looked so pitiful in death, head lolled to one side. The gash in his chest was not visible from afar. Pax faltered.

“How did you know Cerberus was speared?” he asked.

His cousin sighed.

Then he stabbed Pax in the back using the same blade he had used to cut down Cerberus. A blade dipped in poison from the Hydra of Lerna.

The Lernaen Hyrdra was so poisonous that the very hint of its breath and the tracks it left as it walked upon the ground could kill in moments. Just a nick, just a scratch would have been enough to kill Cerberus—his heart needn’t have been pierced. Pax felt his limbs grow numb, his body begin to fail him. He fell back against Adrius.

“You naive fool,” Adrius whispered in his ear. “You truly believed there were none in this world who did not adore you, didn’t you?”

He shoved Pax away from him, and the dying godling stumbled helplessly towards the sealed entrance to the Underworld. The supernova gates were filled with both stars and a nothingness the mind could not comprehend.

Pax fell into and through the gates of Hades—not to the outside world, but into the abyss of space itself. Time slowed as he crossed the threshold, dying.

“I have been your end.” Adrius said. “And I will be their undoing.”

 _Why?_  Pax wanted to ask. But then he was passing out of time and his consciousness faded with the last vestiges of his life.

The lion was no more.


	2. Chapter 2

Lights flickered. Too bright. Not fire. Not stars. What was it?

A steady tone, rhythmic and soft, came to his ears. High-pitched. What was it?

He slowly cracked open his eyes to see white walls and a ceiling. He was lying down, but moving, like some kind of bedding turned chariot. People were all around him, talking, shouting.

There was a strange, transparent material covering his nose and mouth, attached to long clear cords. He struggled, but his body barely responded.

Suddenly, a face came into view—a round, sweet face with pink lips and bright eyes. It was a captivating face. It reminded him of festival girls, with flowers in their hair.

“Don’t try to move.” The girl said. She was young, in mortal years. “You’ll be fine, just calm down.”

Painfully, slowly, Pax raised one of his hands to point weakly at her. She seemed to understand. Briefly, she reached out to him, clasping his hand with her own. Her fingers were tiny, but she was strong.

“My name is Pebble.”

The next few days were a blur. Not in the Divine sense—he realized that time seemed to be passing as it would for the mortals. He was fully aware of the slow slip of hours and seconds when he was awake. It would have been agony, if not for the fact that Pebble came to him, day after day.

Instead of agony, he willed the days to pass slowly while she stayed by his side. He took her hand and laid it on his breast and said, “Pax.”

Pebble had laughed and said, “Pax? Like the Greek myth, or whatever?”

He smiled.

She was something called a nursing student, she told him. He had been struck by some kind of transport near to the location of the institute where she took her studies. It was fortunate she had found him first.

He wanted to tell her that he would have been fine, that he was the mighty Pax, but he could not reveal his identity to her in this modern day and age.

And a deeper worry ate at him, though he could not yet explain it. He was not healed in moments, as was the way of the Divine. His wounds still ached, though aches were trifling for him. But still, they ached, and this was strange.

Something was not right.

It became clearer as the days went on. Soon he was well enough to move about the hospital (what they called the healing ward in which he was housed), but he did not feel like himself. He felt weak, even when they told him he was healing, sick even when they said he was well.

He was turning, or perhaps had even already turned, mortal.

Either it was not his destiny to be killed at Adrius’s hands, or it was simply not so easy to kill a Divine hero such as himself. Whatever the reason, when he had fallen through the gates of Hades, he had managed to escape death, and had ended up on the world called Earth. His sad fate would have driven him to madness, if not for Pebble. If she didn’t show him day in and day out why living out the rest of his short human life on Earth might not be the worst thing that could have befallen him.

In fact, she showed him it could be quite the opposite.

Weeks passed, and he was discharged from the hospital. He returned the very next day to visit Pebble. He’d spent the night on the street.

“Why are you back, what happened?” She asked urgently. Then, with a wrinkled nose, “Why are you still in your hospital gown?”

It didn’t take long for her to figure out he had nowhere else to go. It also didn’t take her long to figure out where he could stay. That night, she introduced her housemates to their new addition.

“Pax, this is Weed, Clown, Thistle, Harpy, and Screwface.” Pebble pointed at each one of her friends in turn. “Guys, this is Pax. I found him on the side of the road and saved his life. He’s gonna stay with us for awhile.”

“Those are… fine names! Very fine.” Pax said as he shook each of their hands. Pebble snorted.

“Not their actual names, but they’ll do. I don’t think I even remember what Screw’s real name is…”

“Pebble, you got a boyfriend?” Clown asked, turning his attention from a loud, flat screen that blared colorful images. “Pebble got a  _boyfriend_?”

“More like a  _man_ friend.” Thistle said, circling Pax, eyebrows raised. “You order this guy from one of Weed’s  _Body Builder’s Monthly_  catalogs? Dude, you should take a page outta  _his_  book—”

“Shut up, Thistle, I’ve put on fourteen pounds of muscle mass in the past—”

Thistle held up a hand. “I’m gonna go ahead and stop you right there, because no one gives a shit.”

Pax took Pebble aside as the others began arguing. “Will it not get crowded? Your abode, though lovely, is quite small.”

“It was small before, what’s one more person?” Pebble shrugged, and smiled. “Welcome home.”

***

Pax laughed loudest at Clown’s jokes, even (especially) when he was the punchline. Together with Weed, he never once skipped what his new friend called “leg day”—and he never once made Weed feel small. During the semester, when Harpy had classes late at night, she would find him outside waiting to listen to the lecture topics they’d covered that day while walking with her back to the apartment. He secured a job at the local corner store, and was able to charm his way to discounts on snacks and alcohol for Thistle and Screwface—mortal beer was light for Pax’s tastes, but they put their chemistry majors to good use figuring out ways to enhance the flavor.

He never needed to work his way into Pebble’s good graces. He had found a spot there from the start.

So Pax walked among mortals once more. And once more, they adored him.

For a year, he experienced life as they did, every moment, every joy and sorrow and disappointment. To his surprise, his friends never pried into his past or where he came from. He did not know whether they sensed the pain he still harbored within him, like an old knife wound, or whether it simply didn’t matter to them. Either way, he was grateful.

As the days went by, he thought he might be making peace with it. Peace with his new life, with parting from his old, Olympus and the Pantheon and his Divinity now seeming like a distant dream he’d had as a child. He supposed that was how things were for mortals. Even his thousands of years of memories were beginning to fade—the ways of the gods were too immense a concept for a mortal mind to grasp. He was content to live from day to day.

Until the day Pebble did not come home.

It was late in the evening. Pebble had not returned from her meeting with her study group.

“Relax, man.” Clown said, without looking away from the TV. “She’s got a huge final coming up. Probably stayed late at the library.”

“Yes, you are right.” Pax nodded thoughtfully, reaching out to dry the plate Harpy was handing to him. Still, it was unlike her not to let them know she’d be missing dinner.

“Speaking of which—yo, Screw!” Thistle hollered. She was at their dining table, hunched over a messy array of notebooks.

“Hey, guys…” Weed said from the couch.

“What?” Screwface yelled back from the other room.

“When are you planning on pitching in on this chem project?” Thistle asked, annoyed.

“I already sent you my notes.”

“ _Guys_.” Clown chimed in, a little louder.

“You can’t just send me your notes, moron, you actually have to help write the damn thing.”

“You were the one who told me I sucked at academic writing!”

“You  _do_ , but—”

“GUYS!” Clown and Weed both yelled. Everyone looked at them, even Screwface, who popped his head out from his room.

“Something weird is happening on campus.” Weed said, pointing.

Pax dried his hands on a towel, coming around for a closer look.

Though it was late at night, the campus was alive with movement. Not students—helicopters whirred overhead, spotlights glaring across the buildings. Trucks bearing police officers swarmed the scene.

“Jesus. It looks like what happened at that government facility in… where was it? New Mexico?” Thistle said. “With that kid who get experimented on and turned into a… a—”

“Is that building on  _fire_?” Harpy asked. Then she covered her mouth. “Oh my god. It’s the nursing building.”

Pax’s heart froze. He stared at the images on the screen, recognizing the logo of the local news. This was happening now.

“Who the hell is  _that_?” Screwface asked, pointing at the screen.

A tall, hooded figure marched forth from the blazing building. His cloak billowed around him, the material fuzzing on camera strangely—fabric that seemed to be made of the night sky, or something more sinister. The depths of hell.

In his arms, he held a person, small, struggling. The news camera zoomed in, and all Pax’s housemates gasped.

“ _Pebble_.” Clown said hoarsely.

The law enforcement teams leveled their weapons at the cloaked figure.

“What are they doing, they’ll hit her,  _they’ll hit her_ —” Harpy sobbed.

The figure raised a hand, and some unseen force swept the armed men off their feet, sending them flying. The hood of the cloak was blasted back, revealing the face beneath. Pax gripped the back of the sofa, knuckles white.

“It cannot be.” He said. “It cannot be.”

It was Adrius. Adrius had discovered he still lived.

The rest of his housemates looked on bewildered as Pax tore out the front door without even stopping to put on his shoes.

“What are you doing?!” Weed shouted.

“Do not follow!” Pax bellowed. “I will make this right!”

He had not the faintest idea how he would accomplish that. A thousand thoughts whirled through his mind, chief among them that he was helpless. He was mortal now. Adrius had not succeeded in killing him the first time, but he had taken the core of who Pax was, what made him special. There was no way he could hope to stand against a godling, even one the rest of the Pantheon had viewed as weak.

And Pax knew his cousin was not weak. He knew ancient tricks—old magics the other Divine didn’t bother themselves with, but that could be just as deadly as a bolt of lightning.

By the time Pax had reached the campus, reached the nursing school, he was almost out of breath. The building was still engulfed by roaring flames. Adrius had not let anyone near it. Pax knew there must be people inside—he had not a moment to lose.

“Adrius!” He bellowed, stepping out from behind the line of enforcers. They tried their best to stop him, but he was still strong for a human, and their ranks were scattered.

“Stop this madness!” Pax shouted, as his cousin’s eyes turned to meet his. His mouth curled upwards into a sneer.

“Pax. I was hoping I’d only need to kill you once, but what’s one more slice?”

He pulled Pebble closer to him with one hand. In his other, he held a knife—the same knife he had used to poison Pax what seemed like a lifetime ago. Pax’s heart went cold. Of course, no time at all had passed for Adrius since Pax fell through the gates of Hades. He must have realized his mistake immediately.

Pebble was staring at him, wide-eyed. “Kill you? Pax, what’s happening? How do you know each other?”

Adrius laughed. “He hasn’t told you? That’s a surprise, he couldn’t keep his mouth shut about his lineage in the old days—’ _I am the might Pax, god-child, wielder of the sun and stars—_ ‘”

“Adrius, let her go.”

“—no matter how many times you were told to stay quiet about it, but why would you, when you were their savior?” Adrius spat at him. “Son of Jupiter, a light to all mankind. Well, look at you now, mortal like the rest of these fools.”

“Why are you doing this?” Pax asked, hands outstretched, pleading. “Why do any of this?”

“Because they think they love you!” Adrius cried out, and the flames behind him raged higher. “But they should fear me instead.”

The people gathered around shrank away from the fire, but Pebble drove her elbow into Adrius’s stomach. He grunted, more startled than injured, but it gave her the smallest opening to pull away from him, trying to reach Pax.

Adrius snarled and raised a hand, the flames behind him coiling and striking straight at Pebble’s back.

“NO!” Pax roared, throwing himself forward. He moved with the swiftness of his old self, like a lion, grabbing Pebble’s arm and flinging her behind him. The flames rushed toward him, burning hotter than any normal fire, far too hot for any human to withstand. They engulfed him. Pebble screamed.

For the second time directly following what should have been his death, Pax opened his eyes.

A golden glow enveloped him, as the flames burned all around him—but they did not burn  _him_. He looked about himself in wonder as the glow began to settle into his skin when, suddenly, a sharp  _CRACK_  split the heavens and a bolt of lightning struck the ground directly between where he and Adrius stood.

The lightning did not fade—instead, it crackled and sparked, and then Pax saw, carried upon it like a rock floating down a stream, a fiery shape. A familiar shape.

His father’s Hammer.

Adrius stood, frozen, as it descended. Pax stepped forward, his hand outstretched, and it landed gently in his palm. He closed his fist around it. It fit his hand perfectly, was the perfect weight.

“How…” Adrius breathed.

Pax stared at the hammer. How, indeed.

Unbidden, his father’s words came back to him—words spoken to him on the day of his birth.

_You will need to become a warrior. Only when you are worthy of that title will you be able to take up my hammer._

He looked behind him, at Pebble, who was staring, wide-eyed, seeing not the boy she had grown to love, but a god she could not have fathomed even existed. And he stared back at her, seeing not just a mortal woman, but the humanity of her race.

His reason to protect them. To die for them. To prove his worth as a warrior.

Pax looked back at Adrius, and the fire in his eyes shone brighter than the trickster god’s ancient flames. Adrius looked at him, and was afraid.

In the space between blinking, the fire, the lightning, and Adrius were gone. Existing one moment, and not the next. The blackened building behind where Adrius had stood was the only evidence, and the cracked and smoking hole in the ground at Pax’s feet.

He turned, slowly, to face the crowd behind him—and was shocked when they erupted into cheers and applause.

Then he saw Pebble, and forgot the rest of the noise. She walked to him and reached out for him, and he took her in his arms, grateful for nothing but the fact that she lived. She was unharmed. She looked up at him, and said,

“So. It looks like there may have been a few things you forgot to mention.”

***

At the sound of soft footfalls upon his throne room floor, Jupiter turned from surveying the worlds and skies.

His son approached, hammer in hand. His Divinity returned to him.

Jupiter smiled.

“Twelve tasks?” Pax asked. “Twelve, when all I had to do was leap in front of one inferno?”

Jupiter threw back his head and laughed, a deep, booming laugh that sent thunder rolling across the sky. When his laughter had subsided, he told his son,

“It was not the deed, but the manner in which it was done.” 

Pax considered this. “I knew I would die.”

“Yes.” Jupiter agreed. “And yet you were willing to sacrifice yourself to save one life.”

“I hardly think Adrius planned on stopping there.” Pax sighed.

“No.” Jupiter shook his head. “Nor do I. He will be dealt with. Once we find him. In the meantime…” He put a hand on Pax’s shoulder. “You are home.”

Pax clasped his father’s hand with his own. “Father…”

“You won’t be staying.” Jupiter cut him off. Pax looked surprised.

“You knew what I was going to say.”

“I suspected.”

“Then you must also have suspected…” Pax squared his shoulders. “I will not be returning to rule them.”

Jupiter nodded. “Yes, that as well. Perhaps you have found a balance…” He mused.

“I return to protect them. To protect Earth.” Pax vowed.

“Good.” Jupiter said, turning back to gaze at the skies. “Because they will need you. Now, more than ever.”


End file.
